Many hotel loyalty programs offer a "points & cash" option, whereby you can pay for your stay partly in cash and partly in points. However, different programs have different rules for this offer. For example, Hilton, Hyatt, and Starwood all offer points & cash awards, though they're capacity controlled, since they represent an especially good…
Continue reading: IHG Points + Cash Awards Improved
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Would be nice to use this option for Pointbreaks bookings as well Would pay $90 in cash, get accomodation for one night and 10k points!
Lucky, while your math (15k points for $90 = .6¢ per point) is accurate, I think the more important math is the value of the points.
For your IC Hong Kong example: $2786 HKD is about $359 USD, so the 50k points redeemed for the hotel makes them only worth .7¢ each... that's not bad, but it's also not a great deal (at least how I value IHG points).
The CP Coogee Beach is worse. $273 AUD is about $199 USD, so the 45k points redeemed makes them only worth .4¢ each... That means you're LOSING money by buying them at .6¢ only to redeem them at 2/3rds the cost! Or another way to look at it, you're paying 45% of the hotel cost in cash to reduce the point cost by only 33%.
@jyee: I think you are missing the point with your calculations. You would only book these hotels at the point + cash rates to cancel the reservations later - in order to keep the points bought at 0.6 cents. You would then use those points for _other_ properties where you get a value of more than 0.6 cents / point.
Failed to mention that you would need at least 30-35k points already in your account (in the examples above) in order to take advantage of this vs. only 5k needed in your account to do the "10k points for $70" trick. I think that's an important thing to call out.
I just noticed while checking availability at a Holiday Inn in Anaheim (for March 1-2) that the 5000 and 10,000 point options were $30 and $60 there. But that's not true across the board. Most other hotels I checked were $40 and $70, as before, with the new $90 option for 15,000 points. One other way to take advantage of this change if you don't have 30-35k lying around already.
0.6c per IHG point tallies with about what I value my points at (I reached a figure of £4 per 1000 points, in UK money)
It is useful to know of this route for buying IHG points at a pretty fair price - eg to top up my holding if I'm a few points short of what I need for a booking, or perhaps for doing a splurge on point breaks - but I'd call the pricing 'fair' rather than 'bargain'.